


saudade

by kagome_angel



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: About as Romantic as Hannibal Gets I Guess, Angst, M/M, Season 03 Speculation, What Have I Done
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-27
Updated: 2015-01-27
Packaged: 2018-03-09 06:53:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3240371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kagome_angel/pseuds/kagome_angel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Saudade - a nostalgic longing for something or someone that was loved and then lost, with the knowledge that it or they might never return; "the love that remains."</p>
            </blockquote>





	saudade

**Author's Note:**

> So I saw the teaser trailer and this immediately popped into my head; it just took me a few days to actually get it written down. Forgive me; I know it is a bit odd.

He’d like to rewrite everything in his head, make up his own story—one in which Hannibal’s retribution did not happen, one in which things had gone differently.  Perhaps the fairy tale that he writes in the recesses of his scarred mind ends with the two of them escaping to Europe together, with Abigail in tow.  Quiet, dysfunctional domesticity that can’t accurately be described as Stockholm syndrome (after all, both of them have been victims of one another). 

There are fantasies, and then there is reality.  The scar on his belly (which still aches from time to time) and Abigail’s gravestone are testament to the monster that Hannibal truly is; it isn’t as if Will’s forgotten, it isn’t as if he could ever forget. 

But even monsters are capable of love, no matter how twisted and unhealthy.  And even monsters are capable of being loved.

Sometimes fantasy and reality intersect.

~*~

He’s on a completely different case when he finds him.  For a while, he stalks the psychiatrist like some sad, lovesick shell of a human being.  He is all of these things, but there is a method to his madness; he has another purpose here, in all of this.  He plants a seed of disbelief, of doubt, waters it, tends to it, fertilizes the soil, watches as the seed sprouts and grows and blossoms.  And then—

“Hannibal,” he calls out in the darkness and the dankness of the catacombs, “I forgive you.”

Hannibal’s forgiveness had come at a steep price—Will’s would-have-been-death and the loss of Abigail for a second time.  Will does not yet know what his forgiveness will cost Hannibal.

He knows Hannibal hears him; his own ears detect the pause in footsteps and a barely-audible inhale, sharper than normal.  Something just this side of panic and incredulousness.  There is movement again, quick, but Will is unrelenting.  He’s waited a long time for this. 

The time for patience is over.

~*~

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he muses when they are, for the first time in what feels like a lifetime, face-to-face. 

“I have,” Hannibal fires back, and his voice is low, almost breathless.  He isn’t quite meeting Will’s eyes.  “I excised myself from your life.”

“You should have cut a little deeper.”  Will’s voice is barely more than a harsh whisper, but the words are heavy with meaning.

The lack of subtlety does not go unnoticed by the older man.  “Are you here to capture me, then?  To do what you couldn’t do before?”

He isn’t here to arrest Hannibal, not tonight.  He answers honestly:  “No.  Not at this particular moment, at any rate.”

“So what are you going to call this, then?” Hannibal questions.  He hasn’t relaxed (Will doesn’t want him to), and he is eyeing Will warily.  “A new beginning? Perhaps it seems fitting to you since I attempted to end our story and quite clearly failed.  Had I not, you wouldn’t be standing here before me.”

“Wouldn’t I?”  It is a rhetorical question.

Running his fingers along the jagged edges of the memories that they had created proves to hurt; tender flesh tears and bleeds, and that is how it always has been with them, and always will be.  There is comfort in the familiar; there is longing for it, too.  And Will _shouldn’t_ ; he _knows_ he shouldn’t—but he does anyway.  This is exactly how it’s always been with them, too.  Feelings are illogical.

“I never forgot,” Will quietly admits.  “And I know that you haven’t either; you couldn’t, no matter how hard you tried, could you?  The what-if’s have haunted you just as they have me.  I know this, Hannibal, because I know _you_.”

Hannibal’s sigh is tremulous.  “Only because I _let_ you.  Do not forget that I know _you_ as well, Will, and you are… correct in concluding that I never unlearned you.  I did want to.  I did try.  Your betrayal alone should have been enough to purge your existence from my memory palace.  But I have seen you every day, and held your dying form in my embrace.”

Dangerous and oddly poetic; Hannibal hasn’t changed. Will shivers slightly, and not because of the cold.  “There will be no new beginning for us.  There’s too much behind us to start over.”  Will pauses, considering.  “This is… a new chapter in our story.”

“And how do you envision it ending?” Hannibal asks.

Will thinks of his former fairytale with its re-written ending; he thinks of wading into the stream and fishing with Abigail.  He imagines Hannibal behind bars, taking refuge in his memory palace.  He imagines making the price of his forgiveness as vicious as Hannibal’s (blood spilling everywhere).  He imagines the two of them walking away from it all, together.

“I don’t know yet,” Will admits, even as a thousand more scenarios flash before his mind’s eye.  “But I’m looking forward to finding out.”

  
  
~END~


End file.
